Kibera Rainy Days

The rains are here. For centuries, rain has always been a blessing and for sure it is, but for the people in Kibera it’s a sign of the worst and possibly the good to come. Rainy season would begin from March to May and this year they were a bit late because of the drastic global climate change. After the long scorching heat of January and February, the people of Kibera can now have a sigh of relief because the dirt and the hot weather will soon be done away with. But this is just the beginning of the story, in Kibera, rainy season is a sign of gloom and devastation and many people would be left with losses at the end of the downpour.

PHOTO/BRYAN JAYBEE

Many houses in Kibera are made of mud and roofs made of corrugated iron sheets that would easily leak when it rains, and because of the poor drainage all over the slum, residents find it hard moving from one point to another. Some people would harvest rainy water for drinking and this would later on result to a number of diseases such as typhoid and cholera because apart from the roofs being corrugated and rusty, human waste and other toxic tackles would find their way onto those rooftops. The walls of the houses made of mud fall easily forcing rainwater inside the houses of Kibera residents.

PHOTO/BRYAN JAYBEE

This is the time of the year that there would be minimal attendance in schools because of the impassable roads, flooded alleys and seasonal streams flowing all around the slum. It’s that time of the year where families would use containers to drain sewage water from their homes because of the poor drainage and architectural design of slum houses which are built with minimal or no architectural approach. Garbage and rubbish would be washed from dumpsites to across streets and a viscous foul smell would spread widely all over the slum. These phenomena would be brought about the overflown pit latrines along corridors of alleys in Kibera.

PHOTO/BRYAN JAYBEE

Rain comes with its opportunities too. For some people, this is the time when they would buy umbrellas, gumboots and heavy jackets in bulk to resell to the dwellers at a favorably profitable price. While walking along the streets in Kibera then you would see groups of young men raking through drainage trenches. It is a belief that when it pours, money, that is coins, will be found inside these drainage channels. Young men would spend the early hours of the morning trying their luck to unearth money in these gutters since majority of them are idle. At some point other groups will emerge carrying heavy metal magnets, trailing the drainage dugouts and streams of Kibera looking for anything that resembles a metal to sell as scraps.

PHOTO/BRYAN JAYBEE

At the end of the day one good thing about rainfall in Kibera is that it gets rid of the dust around and provide free water for washing clothes to the residents of Kibera.